After stalling as long as she could, (and believe me, both as a teenager, and because she had no desire to step into another freaky Realm, Mibbet had plenty of motivation, and intent to delay as long as possible.) She was guided to a door behind one of the stalls on the street. Calling it a door may, in the circumstances, not be the most fitting monicker, however,given that doors are not traditionally known to be viewable from both sides at the same time, and unsurrounded by wall, and because it was hard to call what she was seeing a door when “dread portal”, a term that was far more fitting to the role was jumping up and down, waving a hand, like the smart kid in the class, when they realise nobody else knows the answer, roughly ten seconds before somebody gives them a dead arm.

The portal opened, and Mibbet, yet again today, wished that hadn’t happened. (She was getting far too used to the eerie, eldritch, and uncanny for her tastes lately, and really hoped that it hadn’t noticed her. You do not want the abyss noticing you, for multiple reasons. But the most obvious reason should be that IT IS THE SODDING ABYSS.)

What she saw through the portal, is not something that is easy to describe, an endless desert of blackness, but somehow an entire spectrum of shades of black. Off in the distance stood a black (duh), tower that looked suspiciously like a lighthouse. She went to step through, and into the darkness, when something in her, something she had not felt that much since her Froggy form, told her that, if she did so, she may as well turn back into a frog, and visit an Owlery. (The fact those were actually a thing truly horrified her, a place specifically for making more owls ON PURPOSE? Why would any creature ever want to do that? It was just asking for trouble.)

She looked around the portal, but couldn’t see anything that seemed any more mind-bendingly weird, and threatening than anything else. You had the endless, black desert full of The Gods alone knew what, and that was unpleasant to look at, but that’s what she had kind of expected. You had the eerie, ruins, off in the distance, that would likely be booby trapped to hell and back.

There was the horrifying skyline, that looked like it was painted by Bosch and the Marquis De Sade on a bad day, after somebody passed him a tube of pure, emptiness, and told him to get on with the painting. (Judging by the look of what had been produced, somebody Bosch took an intense dislike to, although their approach to processing said dislike, seemed to have been a complete protest, in the form of malicious compliance, because seriously, what the hell?)

So far so, well, not good, good could not be used to describe anything they were seeing, and the tall, stilted, slightly melty looking creatures, that seemed to be having trouble deciding if they were creatures, or yet more scenery, so kind of mixed and matched between the two did not help. But so far so expected, at least.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Then she figured it out, the entrance was surrounded by something immensely out of place. Pretty flowers, of sure they looked to have been carved by creatures that had only ever encountered flowers, via a drunk guy, whose cousin’s, aunties, neighbours, best friend, knew a guy who had once seen one. But still, flowers, it was way too suspicious.

“Errol”, she commanded, “go back to Trundles, and look in the footman’s box, I don’t mind how you do it, I know it won’t be fun, but fetch me THAT, and a set of tongs, the longer, the better.” Errol flinched, he would rather go into the void, all on his lonesome, in his underwear, than touch THAT. But he was a guard, and he had orders. With a heavy tread, like a man walking to the gallows, he headed to the carriage. Grabbing an extra thick set of gauntlets, and then reached, with tongs, into the footman's box. There was a brief struggle, before eventually he grabbed the writhing, squirming, thing in the tongs, and headed back.

He really did not like this order, there may be creatures from the beyond there, waiting to snap The Princess up, but this felt like escalation to him. He did not wish to declare war on the void. “Are you sure you want to do this, Princess?” he asked, as he wrestled to hold THAT down with the tongs. It was times like this he was reminded, sometimes it could get difficult, when battling the monstrous, to remember not to become a monster yourself. That line was so easy to cross, even by accident. “If we want to keep the world safe, we need to get in there,” she replied. “Even if it means doing something extreme.” She quickly grabbed the tongs, and pitched THAT through the void.

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Turns out, she was right about the flowers, they were definitely not what they appeared, as ten seconds later, they shifted into some kind of bizarre fusion, of wolf, flower, and something hungry, with a mouth that split five ways, it quickly pounced on THAT.

Twenty seconds later they tasted their prey, and realised they had made a mistake, as their taste buds encountered something that tasted like an unholy amalgam of Durian, Surströmming, fifty year aged Gorgonzola, something scraped from the back of the kitchen cupboards, (you know? That one bit in the corner cupboard you can never, ever reach, that seems almost sentient enough to head out to vote in the next general election?) Belly button lint, old batteries, and misery.

Whatever it was, didn’t have a mouth, yet it felt like it was eating them from the inside out. The nightmare creature, spat THAT out, and ran, trying to get as far away from the horrifying thing as it could manage. ***************************************************************************************

On the sand in the void, a much darned, red, and yellow, striped sock turned to look around, it looked like it was sniffing the air for a moment, before heading in the direction of the uncanny, monster. It was free of the dark place, and there was much hunting to be done here. Yarn twisting into tendrils, it headed off, in pursuit of the prey, that had been so unwise as to accost it. **************************************************************************************

Errol gazed at The Princess, in horrified admiration, as she slipped through the portal. “You know”, he muttered to himself, “that may have been just a bit too cruel.”